Locofast raised $15 million

Locofast, a business-to-business (B2B) textile marketplace, in a funding round has raised $15 million. The funding round was led by Stellaris Venture Partners and Chiratae Ventures. Park+’s CEO Amit Lakhotia, Kris Gopalakrishnan’s fund Axilor Venurtes, BharatPe’s CEO Suhail Sameer, and Uni’s Nitin Gupta also participated in the funding round. Founder and chief executive (CEO) of Locofast, Deepak Wadhwa said: “Despite being a major contributor to India’s GDP [Gross Domestic Product], the textile industry is fragmented and slow in terms of technological adoption. With our previous entrepreneurial experience coupled with technical expertise, the on-ground study of the ecosystem, and understanding of SME [small and medium enterprises] functioning, our mission is to enable a sophisticated tech-enabled platform for textile SMEs and empower them with market linkages from across the world.” This was Locofast’s Series A round. The company also raised debt from its strategic partners. Locofast basically aims to resolve issues of supply chain problems prevalent in the textile market by connecting suppliers with vendors. It was founded by Deepak Wadhwa and Mohit Piplani. Locofast said that the raised capital will be used for the expansion of its operations to new cities in India and to develop new product categories. Currently, the company has 500 suppliers from all around the nation.